Garlic, Zea, & Time: Summer CSA ’11 – Week 19

Zea is our garlic baby. Okay, well technically, Zea is a latin name for harvest (and corn), but she feels more like a garlic baby to me. Mike and my very first pseudo-date was a rainy morning breaking garlic seed. Fast-forward a few years, and the very first thing Zea and I ever do together at the farm is plant garlic. She was just two weeks old. I carried her on my front and dropped seed ahead of the planters.

Zea and crew breaking garlic seed, 2010

Two years have now passed since Zea’s first garlic planting. Two more garlic harvests have occurred. And yesterday, Zea helped plant her third garlic crop. For the rest of my life, garlic planting and Zea’s birthday will go hand in hand. The thought makes me smile.

The first step to plant garlic is to get seed. We save our own. Last week we sorted through the garlic and set aside all the biggest and best bulbs for seed.

Next you break the bulbs into seed. A garlic seed is simply a garlic clove. In preparation for planting, we break all the cloves off the bulbs. Packers games (and this year the Brewers too!) are great times for this task.

As we do for any other crop, we prep the soil before planting by tilling the soil. This kills any weeds, aerates the soil, and breaks it down into a smooth, workable texture for planting.

To plant the garlic, we use our transplanter to mark the holes and put water down. People do the rest. The “droppers” drop a seed down on each hole – every 6 inches, 3 rows per bed. Then the planters follow, pressing each clove, root side down, as far as they can into the ground. Then you cover it over. And if you are Zea, you cover it and say, “night, night, see you springtime!”

Similar to Zea’s goodbye to the garlic, we owe a goodbye to all of our Everyother Group A members. We can’t believe a whole CSA season is coming to a close already! We thank you for your support and hope you enjoy this last box as much as you did the others.

In the box this week is officially the last of the peppers. Just one pepper per person. EOs will get the very last of the tomatoes – see last week’s recipe for fried green tomatoes! New this week is beauty heart radish. It’s a beautiful magenta inside and will go great with your romaine and a little blue cheese.